Healing hands and magical spells

Britt-Mari Nasstrom
Gteborgs universitet Sigrdrifas invocation
Long I slept, long was I sleeping long are the woes of men Odin brought it about that I could not break the spell of drowsiness

The valkyrie Sigrdrifa addresses Sigurd Fafnesbani with these words after he has wakened her from her sleep on Hindarfjell. Sigrdrifa is better known under another name, Brynhild, and her magic sleep was a punishment of Odin, her father according to the prose version of the story. She had disobeyed her fathers will and he stung her with a magical thorn, which made her sleep. Odin put a shield-wall around her and stated that no one who was acquainted with fear could pass this and wake her up. Sigurd Fafnisbani heard this story from the deadly wounded dragon and headed towards Hindarfjel for the maiden. His meeting with the valkyrie is told in Sigrdrfuml, belonging to the Eddic poems and the cycle of the Vlsungar. After that she invokes the gods and the mighty fecund earth and beseeches them of eloquence and native wit and healing hands, not only for herself but 356

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also for Sigurd, the one who never was acquainted with fear and whom she now is expecting to marry. The healing hands are completed with knowledge of magical power, spells and favourable letters, good charms and joyful runes. Sigrdrifa furthermore tells that the runes should be cut on the hands and marked on the nails in order to beguile a wife. Others were victory-runes cut on the sword, others to calm the sea; there were speech-runes, mind-runes and bookrunes, which at the first glance would have very little to do with healing. Others are more accurate to this connection, like the helping-runes in childbirth:
Helping-runes you must know if want to assist and release children from women; they shall be cut on the palms and clasped on the joints and then the disir is asked for help.

The knowledge of runes is directly connected with an invocation of the disir. The disir referred to collective goddesses as well as to women connected with the supernatural, a form of tutelary spirits.1 The function of the Dsir The Dsir were, according to the sources, objects of worship, something that is witnessed by several place-names such as Diseberg, Disin > Disavin, Disathing and Disavid > Disaui. They are also represented in personal names like Freydis, Odinsdisa and Hjrdis, for example.2 The disir received a special sacrifice called dsablt, mentioned in the Icelandic sagas. These were performed in the autumn or in the spring and connected with fertility and the years crop. The great sacrifice in Uppsala, described by Adam of Bremen, could have been such a blt to the disir. It was held at the vernal equinox at that time and connected with an assembly, the dishing. After the Christianization of Uppsala, the dishing was moved to the month of February, according to Snorri Sturluson. The disir were worshipped in a specific building, called the Disarsal. Disarsal must, however, be translated as the house of the Dis and the name intimates the existence of one goddesses, who alone represented the anonymous collective of disir. The sources hint at the great goddess Freyja, whose characteristics coincide with the disirs. galderwords of magical healing This relation to Freyja and to Frigg, the great mother among the goddesses, are exemplified in another Eddic poem, called Oddrns Lament, also belonging to the Vlsunga cycle. Here the exhausted mother, Borgny, after being delivered twins, blesses her helper Oddrn:
1 2

de Vries II p.298. AnEWb s.v. ds, p.77.

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May all the kindly beings help you Frigg and Freyja and more of the gods as you warded away that dangerous illness from me.

Britt-Mari Nasstrom

Borgnys help at the problematic birth was made by certain spells called galdrar:
...strongly Oddrn sang, powerfully Oddrn sang bitter spells for Borgny.

Galdr derives from the same stem as gala to crow and galen mad and was performed in a shrill voice, which must have acted suggestively. Moreover, the galdr had its own metre called galdralag, the metre of spells. Two types of galdr have survived in a manuscript of Merseburg. The first tells of women, who watch the battles and who are able to tie or loose the feared war-fetter. This charm could have been recited before battle, with a view to invoking these powers to decide the outcome of the struggle.3 It alludes to a recurrent topic in a martial situation, magic fetters, suddenly being thought to chain the warrior invisibly to the spot, so that he would easily fall victim to his enemies. The force of this magic fetter is demonstrated expressively in Hrar saga ok Hlmverja(36), where Hr is trying to escape from his enemies when he is hit by the war-fetter and paralysed:
The war fetter came upon Hr, but he cut himself free once and a second time. The war fetter came upon him for the third time. Then the men managed to hem him in, and surrounded him with a ring of enemies, but he fought his way out of the ring and slew three men in so doing.4

The fourth time the war fetter falls over him, he is overwhelmed and killed, uttering the word, a mighty troll decides in this.5 We should not think that fear, but a feeling of immobility, not unlike the kind we may experience in nightmares, when we want to run away but cannot move, caused this kind of paralysis. The galdr ends with the words: Dash out of the fetters! Run from the enemies! in order to cure the paralysis. The second galdr is more related to the healing hands combined with the magic spells, although the patient in this case is a horse:
Phol and Wodan went to the forest Then Baldrs (or the lords) horse sprained its foot.

The invocation goes to the goddesses and the gods:

then Sinhtgunt, the sister of Sunna charmed it, F. Strm, 1954, p.71. Harar Saga, trans. from H. Davidson 1964, pp.63-64. 5 There are other examples of the war fetter in Sverris saga, 1920, ed. G. Indreb, Oslo, Sturlunga Saga, 1988, ed. rnlfur orsson, Reykjavk, II, 57.
4 3

11th International Saga Conference then Frija, the sister of Volla charmed it. then Wodan charmed it, as he was well able to do.

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Sunna is the old goddess Sl, the sun, and therefore Singunt has been identified as the moon, although there is no other evidence for such an interpretation. Frija is probably Frigg, derived from frj to love and her sister Volla appears in the Icelandic literature as Friggs eskimey servant, although she isas her name reveals a goddess of abundance, with relatives in Classical Antiquity as Ops and Abundantia. Finally, Wodan or Odin is the Great Magician among the gods, the master of galdr, galdrsfair. According to Hvaml he once learnt nine wise songs and he masters eighteen spells, corresponding to the secret wisdom as earlier mentioned, which was special for the kings.6 It is probably Wodan who utters the very essence of the galdr:
Be it sprain of the bone, be it sprain of blood, be it sprain of the limb: bone to bone, blood to blood sinew to sinew limb to limb, thus be they fitted together.

These lines are most interesting and scholars have earlier drawn attention to the fact that they appear in several charms in Old Irish stories and moreover in Kalevala, where Lemminkinens mother joined her sons severed limbs together, restoring him to life, a formula derived from the Finnish neighbours. The oldest known expression goes back to the Vedic poem Atarva-Veda and it as a medium in the healing process as far as we know from Sigrdrifuml. This galdr is considered to have its roots in an Indo-European tradition of healing. It survived in folklore with the change to Christs horse broken, and there are many variants of the charms in this version. We do not know what kind of galdr Oddrn sang to ease Borgnys pains, but after the change of religion in the North the women in labour invoked the Virgin Mary. She had the certain key to lock up their loins, as these spells say literally. Holy relics were also used to deliver the baby, but there was a striking difference between the Old Norse customs and the Christian. The pain should not be eased, since this was a result of Eves sin, but the help still was there to bring the child into this world and to holy baptism. To ease the pain resulted, according to folk belief, in the birth of a were-wolf or a mare. Oddrns bitter, strong galdr therefore might continue as a secret.7
Nsstrm 1996, 236 7 Women were forbidden to use Galium Verum to ease the pain at a council 734. In the Old Norse this flower was known as Freyjas weed, another connection to the goddess assistance at childbirth. Somehow the use of Galium Verum seem to survive all prohibitions, but it was now said that the Virgin Mary had made the bed for her child of this flower and the name was changed
7 6

360 Healing hand at childbirth

Britt-Mari Nasstrom

In The Lament of Oddrn some glimpses of the customs of childbirth are revealed. When she had arrived, she had also loosened the saddles like other knots in the house to ease the childbirth. The woman in labour is kneeling, supported by the midwives, except the one sitting in front of her, expecting to deliver the baby. This is Oddrns role in the poem: she sits at the ladys knees and during the hard labour she spells her special galdrar to help the children on their way. a girl and a boy were able to kick on earth/cheerful children for the slayer of Hogni( 8) . Oddrn had probably those healing hands, which was necessary at childbirth. Returning to Sigrdrifuml we notice that not only Sigrdrifa herself was gifted with them but also Sigurd Ffnisbane, something that should imply that a man could be able to assist at childbirth with his healing hands. The Eddic poem of Rig says that the king should help at childbirth (44). Gnge Rolf assists at the queens childbirth and it is expressly told that he laid his hand upon her, which effected a quick birth. This concept of the healing hands was connected with the qualities of a king and it is told of St. Olaf of Norway that he had healing hands.8 Kings qualities are specialised in other Eddic songs like Hvaml, where Odin, the great Magician among the gods, enumerates his knowledge. In Rigsthula the god Rig instructs the young Kon, the future king, in the similar knowledge and this appears again in Sigrdrifas speech to Sigurd. Besides healing a king should know how to destroy an enemys weapon, calm the sea and even raise men from death through his magical knowledge. Still, the healing power of the king was an old and almost universal concept, connected to the sacral kingship, regarded as a gift from the gods. This is the reason why Sigurds and the other kings-to-be had to learn how to ease the pain of a woman in labour. This is also the meaning behind Gripis prophecy to Sigurd about his future meeting with Sigrdrifa:
She will teach you powerful runes all those which men wish to know and how to speak every single human tongue medicine with healing knowledge: may you live blessed king!

Healing in Old Norse religion was, as these examples have shown, combined with magical power and knowledge of efficacious galdr.9 This quality was not necessarily given by nature but, according to the sources, by the gods, as
into the bedstraw of the Virgin Mary in most of the Germanic languages. 8 NKS II.s 289 9 There existed a doctor among the Gods called Eir. She is mentioned in Snorres enumeration of the goddesses in his Edda. Little is known of her character, though she is mentioned in a number of kenningar, merely describing a beautiful woman.

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demonstrated in Sigrdrifas invocation to the sir and the goddesses:

With gracious eyes may you look upon us and give victory to those sitting here

Runes as healing signs The powerful runes of Sigrdrifa are an expression of the letter as holy in itself. The very word rna meant secret and the letters were thought as originating from the gods to special persons, who were said to ra rnom to rule and to master the secret letters). The word ra thus implies a special knowledge, which means that the runes had to be understood by the magician or the healer. One famous example of this occurs in Egils saga Skalla-grimsonar. Egil Skalla-Grimson is visiting a peasant in Edskog in Sweden, who worries for his sick daughter Helga. She suffers from an unknown illness, never sleeps and seems to have lost her wits. Egil asks the peasant what they had done to cure her and gets the answer that a young man had carved runes in order to cure her, but this made it even worse. He investigates the bed and finds whalebone with runes under it. He reads them and cuts them away and burns the bone. The he makes a poem about this event:
No one should cut runes that did not know them (ra) Many are lost of darkness of the runes. I saw ten secret runes cut on the bone, which caused the pain of the woman for a long time.

Then Egil cut other runes and put them under the pillow of the sick woman, She awakened from her sleep, saying that she felt much better but that she still was very weak. This story can be associated with an archaeological find, a lyfstav a medicine wand, from Ribe, a spell to help those who suffer from the shivering disease, i.e. malaria, depicted in runes. The spell starts by calling on the earth, the heavens, the Virgin Mary and God the King in a stanza built on the metre of fornyrislag to lend the evoking one healing hands and the tongue of life, after which the charm turns into a conjuration by which the disease is to be exorcised. The feeling of a pre-Christian belief in these lines, where both heaven and earth are invoked together with the holiest powers of Christianity, is stressed by an obscure sentence about ni : nour, nine misfortunes or, more plausibly, nine coercive powers. They lie on a stone, designated as black and standing in the sea, and they will neither sleep well nor waken warmly until the patient has recovered from his illness.10

E. Moltke, 1976, Runerne i Danmark og deres oprindelse, Copenhagen, pp.396-400. A. Hultgrd, 1992, Religis frndring, kontinuitet och ackulturation/synkretism i vikingatidens och medeltidens skandinaviska religion. Kontinuitet i kult och tro frn vikingatid till medeltid, ed. B. Nilsson, Uppsala, pp.29-30.

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362 The norns and the nau

Britt-Mari Nasstrom

These nine nour takes us back to the Lay of Sigdrifa, where the rune nau denotes necessity, anxiety, suffering.
...on a horn they should be cut and on the back of the hand and mark your nail with nau.

They should be marked at the nails as protection and were obviously connected with the norns, something still existing in folk belief, where small white dots under the nails are called marks of the norns. The norns were a third group of collective goddesses, connected with fate and the borders of life and death. Their appearance at childbirth is noticed in The Lay of Fafnir in a stanza, usually translated as those who choose children from the mothers. The literal translation says, however, that they choose the mothers from their sons, which must be interpreted as menaing that they could appear as death goddesses for the women. This stanza is usually translated as meaning who should survive or not. If mother and child survived, they received a sacrifice of porridge called norne-grautar, something that resisted the change of religions for many centuries. The disir and the norns were thus deities invoked in spells and through runic magic; still the art of healing had to be learnt. The interaction between healing and magic is conspicuous, but not as the distinction made by Frazer where magic was a means to subdue even the divine. The gods, who ultimately decided fate of man, gave the healing hands and the magic galdr.